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Big Picture to Tiny Habits

March 18th, 2012 · Negative Thinking, Planning, Positive Thinking, Self Mastery

You Should be Committed Part 3

To Recap.

Training Your Mind for Success Step 1

Remember learning to drive?  Remember "keep your eyes mainly down the road and not at what is right in front of the car"?  It seemed confusing to me.  The driving instructor reminded me several times by asking "where are you looking?". 

I learned that if you try to drive by looking at what is right in front of the car then you drive erratically.  When, on the other hand, you drive by looking far down the road then you drive smoothly and greatly increase your chances getting to your destination. 

Life and business follow the same rule.  Both smooth out and become less erratic when you keep your eyes down the road.  In driving, looking down the road not only smoothed out your driving, it also calmed your mind.  When you are focused on what is right in front of the car you can get caught up in anxiety producing and repetitive internal conversations like "I’m too close to the center line (adjust), I’m too close to the curb (adjust), I’m too close to the car in front of me (adjust), I’m driving too slow (adjust)." 

The increasing adjustments and readjustments consume your conscious mind and you become aware that you have no idea what is coming at you.  Fear and clenching take over.  When you look down the road, you naturally stay between the lines, maintain proper spacing and know what’s coming.  You calm down and learn to enjoy driving. 

Having goals, in life and business, is the equivalent to looking down the road in driving. They help you drive more smoothly and with less stress and anxiety. When I was sixteen years old and got my drivers license I had an exciting destination to which I really wanted to drive.  It was my girlfriends house.  She was pretty much all I could think about.  Between my house and hers were candy stores, ball fields, sporting good stores, electronics stores and all manner of things which could distract me.  They didn’t because I had an exciting goal that kept my eyes down the road and my heart set on my destination.  In life and business it means everything to have an exciting goal.

Step 1 to Training Your Mind for Success is to give yourself the gift of a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG). 

A BHAG or high level goal creates a high level mindset.  A high level mindset keeps your eyes down the road and helps you avoid distractions and indulgences.  Many authors I’ve read argue that the best goals are other-oriented goals, that the best companies are those with goals bigger than themselves.  ActionCOACH’s BHAG is "World Abundance through Business Re-Education" . My personal BHAG is to help add ten-thousand jobs to our local economy by the end of February 2014. What’s yours?

Training Your Mind for Success Step 2

Try and think of the steps required to tie your shoes.  Most of us can’t do this without resorting to actually tying our shoes.  The knowledge and physical movements necessary to tie our shoes are stored in our subconscious mind.  We tie our shoes without consciously thinking about it – the behavior is practically invisible to our conscious mind. This is true for much of our behavior, not just tying our shoes or driving. 

Our actions and responses are largely driven by habits stored in our sub conscious mind.  This is our mental context.  To improve our results we must change our behavior, to change our behavior we must improve our mindset. 

It’s not just physical, emotional patterns are also stored in our sub-conscious minds and are a major part of our autopilot’s programming.

Buzz Kill

What if our autopilot / habitual responses aren’t very helpful to us?  What if they, in fact, sabotage us?

I was my own buzz killer.  I was really good at it too.  I spent ten years of my life being the angry man.  Friends and coworkers even bought me the "Grumpy" shirt – with the line on it "Hasn’t smiled in 37 years."  I wore it.  Proudly.  Really.  I was in the software and computer business then.   Computer users and business leaders were constantly, to my mind, screwing things up or making very stupid decisions.  The things they did, I thought, constantly made me angry.  I became very critical of people in general. 

It was, I thought to myself every day, a "moron-athon out there."  I was angry at having to put up with all of it.  I regularly spent two or three hours every evening sitting angrily at my desk while I bitterly went over the idiotic things I had endured that day.  This led to a bunch of unhealthy behaviors.

One day I was listening to a couple of people tell me about the fun they had the previous evening.  I had, I realized, spent the previous evening being angry at these very two people.  They had been out having fun while I was sitting home stewing in anger because of them, or so I thought.  It was somehow their fault that I was having the opposite of fun.

That’s when I had a BFO (Blinding Flash of the Obvious).  They hadn’t, I realized, decided I should sit angry at home.  That was my choice.  It began dawning on me that they didn’t chose for me to be angry either.  Everything I was blaming on others was my own choice.  Yuck.  I chose, back then, to be angry at many things, I chose to go over and over these things in my mind.  I had a well developed habit of reacting angrily.  There are, I began to realize, an infinite number of reasons to be angry.  I was tired, though, of spending my time, my life, feeling angry.  I wanted to have some fun.  I was going to have to learn how to make a different choice.

Step 2 to training your mind for success is to accept responsibility for your mental context – your mindset.  Accepting responsibility means changing a few simple words in your thinking and speaking habits.  You can no longer say or think, for example,;

  • That  (he, she, it or they make) makes me angry
  • That upsets me
  • That makes me sad

Those words are, after all, lies.  Nothing and no one can reach inside your head and flip our angry switch.  Only we have that power.  If you change your language to recognize this reality you take power and responsibility over your own mindset.  Now you get to say;

  • I choose to get angry at that (him, her, it or them)
  • I choose to get upset about that
  • I choose to feel sad about that

Once you accept responsibility for your state of mind, well, then you get to do something about it.

Training Your Mind for Success Step 3

Tiny – Even Silly Things Make Huge Differences.

I had, for whatever reason, and the reasons don’t even matter, programmed my autopilot to view many things negatively.  I wasn’t having much fun and it wasn’t leading to great success either.  I worried that this was just the way I was – but I refused to accept that conclusion.  I became determined to figure out how to change me.  I had to face a bunch of things I had heard before and at which I had sneered.  There were  some that I had thought were stupid that I might have to try. I just didn’t believe that something trivial and ridiculous that I felt foolish doing could be of any help in lifting my heavy negative mindset.  I wasn’t going to accept staying the way I was, though, so I gritted my teeth and gave something a try. 

I had, if you remember him from Saturday Night Live, Stuart Smalley’s opinion of talking to myself using goofy "self – affirmations".  A dumb-ass, moronic idea, I snorted at the very thought.  Really successful people I knew, however, were suggesting it was key.  With great doubt and feeling foolish I decided to try it.  Since I knew, quite well, that there were infinite reasons to feel angry I wondered if there might also be infinite reasons to feel joy.  Given the choice of spending more of my life feeling angry or more of it feeling joy – I chose joy.  Duh.  The affirmation I decided I would say out loud to myself, once or twice a day, would be "I am in a state of joy."  So I said it, out loud.  It didn’t seem to work.

It was just so dumb I couldn’t take it seriously.  I chuckled at the lameness of it and my own dorky-ness in saying it. Then I caught sight of myself in the bathroom mirror.  That made me mad.  I was smiling.  Laughing even.  The damn thing had put a smile on my face.  Finding myself mad that the the dumb thing had, after all,  worked – well I smiled bigger.  I laughed at myself.  Me doing a ridiculous affirmation was funny.  I had to face the truth.   I was, for a moment, in a state of joy.  I was pissed off, embarrassed and delighted all at the same time.  Something of which I had made fun ( I had even purchased the Stuart Smalley book) might actually work.  So I kept talking nonsense to myself.  Out loud.  More than once a day.

It took a while but people began reacting differently to me.  I realized how far I had come when, at a networking meeting, someone actually said to me "you always seem like you are up to something with that smile on your face."  I was no longer the angry man.  It was a joy to hear.

Step 3 to Training Your Mind for Success is to use a tiny, silly habit to start building your successful mindset.

Talking to yourself, out loud, a couple of times a day is an example of a "tiny habit".  "Tiny habits" are a powerful system for leading yourself to a happier, richer and more successful life.  It take you a few seconds to say something out loud to yourself and it won’t cost you anything.  Next we will look at systemizing “Tiny Habits”.

Habits of the Truly Successful – You should be committed to adopting these too!

Other habits that truly successful people have are the habit of self development and the habit of looking down the road and planning.

Consider giving these habits a try yourself.  Get a plan for your business in place at our upcoming GrowthCLUB workshop.  The next one is March 30th.  Click here for more information on GrowthCLUB.

Improve your business skills at our fun business BootCAMP (April 10).  Click here for more information on our BootCAMP.

Your Unreasonable Friend,

Dennis

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You Should Be Committed–Part 3

February 20th, 2012 · Negative Thinking, Planning, Process, Self Mastery

What if it isn’t hard to change?

Last week in step 1 we discussed that in order to program our autopilot for success we need a high level goal.  I also shared my high level goal with you.   You’ll have to let us know if you came up with one that makes your heart leap.

Training Your Mind for Success: Step 2

I ran into a mental context this past Friday that was, at least, if not pleasant, instructive.

con·text

n.

1. The part of a text or statement that surrounds a particular word or passage and determines its meaning.

2. The circumstances in which an event occurs; a setting

Anger and blame and then, more of both.  This guy was mad. It was somebody’s fault.  Not his. No, not his.  Somebody made him mad.

That kind of thinking takes place in a common mental context.  One in which  other people have the power to make a person angry. 

Fuming, blaming and criticizing the other person’s behavior with clenched jaws, this guy did not want to hear my questions.

“How much of your life do you want to spend angry?”  He just blinked at me.  “No one,” I told him, “can actually make you angry. You have to choose it.  If you say ‘he makes me mad,’ then I say you are lying.  If you say ‘I got mad about  what he is doing, then I think you are telling the truth.  Why are you choosing to spend your life angry?”

There was a shift in his mental context.  It made sense to him.  “You’re right, I’m choosing to be angry.”  We had, for a little while, a more constructive conversation.  Even more instructively, it didn’t last long.

Just as through repetition we’ve taught our mental autopilot how to drive a car for us  (see “You Should Be Committed” part 1) we’ve also taught our mental autopilot how to think for us.  Just as we have driving habits, we have thinking habits.

In this case his conscious mind chose to think differently for a few minutes and then his autopilot, his thinking habit if you will, kicked back in and he became too upset to talk further.

I observed this with regretful eyes because I spent 10 years of my life doing the same thing.   I was the angry man.  It was so easily justifiable, so clear – even.  So stupid, really. 

I figured out, eventually, that the people I was angry at were enjoying themselves, while I was home gnashing my teeth – for years.  The only thing I accomplished was diminishing my own life and that of my loved ones.  Now and then, I still find myself visiting victim land but I’m no longer a permanent resident vying for a leadership position. 

Its not that life is giving me fewer opportunities to be angry.  The universe hasn’t started running the way I think it should.  There are the same infinite number or reasons to be angry now as there were back then.  I just realized that there are also an infinite number of reasons to feel joyful too.  Then I asked myself how much time do I want to spend feeling angry versus feeling joyful.  Duh. 

I also got to wondering what choosing to be angry does for me.  Eventually I realized I use it to avoid looking in the mirror -  to avoid looking closely at my own behavior.  It is far easier to blame pretty much anything or anyone else.  What scared me, accepting responsibility, turns out to be a great source of joy.  Really.  This continues to be a big surprise to me.

Choosing to blame negative feelings or unhappy life circumstances on others is victim thinking.  We all know a professional victim or two.  It is not a successful thinking habit.  I suspect most of us are, at least, amateurs at it at various times in our life.  Really successful people don’t do it.

Training Your Mind for Success

Step 1 is to give yourself a high level goal.

Step 2 is to accept responsibility for your mental context – your mindset – and hold yourself accountable for improving it every day for the rest of your life.

till·er/?til?r/

Noun:

  1. A horizontal bar fitted to the head of a boat’s rudder post and used for steering.
  2. An implement or machine for breaking up soil; a plow or cultivator.

This is where you put your hand on the tiller and begin steering.  Your mindset is your tiller.  The wind and the currents will carry you somewhere.  They may do so anyway.  They will certainly try.  Not to mention the economy, family and friends, the news or a host of other forces that will gladly steer your life if you choose to let them. 

Will you choose to let them?  Or, will you choose your own course?

"Damn the torpedoes, Full speed ahead!"

Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (1801-1870). Aboard Hartford, Farragut entered Mobile Bay, Alabama, 5 August 1864, in two columns, with armored monitors leading and a fleet of wooden ships following. When the lead monitor Tecumseh was demolished by a mine, the wooden ship Brooklyn stopped, and the line drifted in confusion toward Fort Morgan. As disaster seemed imminent, Farragut gave the orders embodied by these famous words. He swung his own ship clear and headed across the mines, which failed to explode. The fleet followed and anchored above the forts, which, now isolated, surrendered one by one. The torpedoes to which Farragut and his contemporaries referred would today be described as tethered mines.
[Hearn, Chester G. Admiral David Glasgow Farragut: The Civil War Years. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988): 263-265. According to the book by Admiral Farragut's son, The Life of David Glasgow Farragut, First Admiral of the United States Navy, (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1879), pages 416-417, Admiral Farragut said "Damn the torpedoes! Four bells! Captain Crayton, go ahead! Joucett, full speed!"] from http://www.history.navy.mil/trivia/trivia02.htm

One ship destroyed in front of him, another frozen in fear, drifting towards disaster Farragut had a few excuses available for not going forward.  His mindset didn’t lead him to accept them.  His mindset steered him to take another path, one that led him to the results he wanted.  The mindset comes first, then the actions, then the results.  Are you willing to take ownership of your mindset?  Will you own your own ship?

My high level goal, my Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG), is to help add 10,000 jobs to our area’s economy over the next two years.  I need quite a mindset to achieve this objective.  There are a couple of torpedoes to be damned along the way.  How will I strengthen my mindset to match this task?

To be committed is to do what is necessary to get your autopilot on board with the commitment every day.  Doing this in a way that you will stick to and continue is the key. 

You and I should be committed.  Next we’ll look at some “insignificant” ways to make significant changes on a daily basis.  Stay tuned.

Consider strengthening your commitment to run a successful and profitable business by attending one of our upcoming workshops.

Business BootCAMP starts February 27th.

Business GrowthCLUB March 30th

Your unreasonable friend,

Dennis

216-965-9129

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You Should Be Committed–part 2.

February 13th, 2012 · Fear, Planning, Process, Self Mastery

What if the truth is that we over-complicate things? 

What if the truth is that the differences between those who live their dreams and those who don’t are really small?

So small, so seemingly insignificant, and so simple that we rush right past them?

What if it is something that we can change? What if, with a little work and, with a little time, we can make the small change that makes all the difference?

I think we can.

Last week I wrote about our mental autopilot.  Our subconscious mind which stores the thought patterns we use and reuse.   Using the example of learning to drive I covered how first we drive primarily using our conscious mind – until we have trained our subconscious mind to drive.  Then our subconscious mind takes over the bulk of the duties and we drive mostly on autopilot.

What if you could train your mind to achieve the success you want on autopilot?

Training your mind for success: Step 1

Step 1 is to give yourself a high level goal. 

A high level goal creates a high level mindset.  A high level mindset helps you   avoid distractions, indulgences and short term wins.  A high level mindset raises the bar on all areas of your life.  You become a better person.

To discover your high level goal a great place to start is at your own funeral.  Imagine you are at your funeral and are able to hear what is said about you.  This gets at the question of what difference we want to make in the world.  Imagine that a family member, someone from your business life and someone from your community are giving eulogies about you.  What do you want to hear them say?

Write the eulogies for them about you.  In those eulogies you are likely to find a high level goal that you love and that strikes fear into your heart.  Fear and excitement together are a great sign.

As example, I will share mine.  When I was a kid Northeast Ohio was an economic powerhouse.  I want to be recognized as having contributed to restoring that reality to our area.  That’s my dream.  That’s the difference I want to make in this world.  I have others that are family related and business related but this one I am excited about and frightened to share.

My high level goal, that I derive from my dream, is to help add ten thousand jobs to our area economy over the next two years.  I will do this by helping area businesses become more successful and more profitable.

Are you willing to share your dreams and your high level goal?

You and I should be committed.  Next  we’ll look at Step 2 to Training Your Mind for Success.   Stay tuned.

Consider strengthening your commitment to run a successful and profitable business by attending one of my upcoming workshops.

Business BootCAMP starts February 27th.

Business GrowthCLUB March 30th

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You Should Be Committed!

February 6th, 2012 · Fear, Planning, Positive Thinking, Self Mastery

Not as in…

 “They’re coming to take [you] away ha ha ho ho he he…to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time”

… even though that actually does sounds pretty good.  (If you don’t remember it that quote is from an old song – recorded in 1966.  You can experience it on Youtube using this link; They’re Coming to Take Me Away ).

Not that, if you’re a business owner, you haven’t wondered if you really are completely bonkers.  You may even have family members routinely questioning your sanity.  Both of my wives have.  No, not at the same time!

I’m talking about something that is probably more fun than being in an institution and still, for most of us, is very scary at the same time.  It is also something we admire in others.  When we see somebody being really dedicated and successful at something we think “I’d like to be like that.”  We crave it.  Have you had that thought and felt that way?  I have.

If you’ve read my previous blogs you know I’m on the trail of a thought.   This is part of my effort to learn exactly what thoughts or thought patterns start people down the road to great success and keep them on it.

Choosing to be committed to something is simply a thought.  Choosing to think  a sentence that starts with  “I am committed to….”  is a choice that really successful people say that they make.  Try thinking a thought like this and listen to what comes up in your mind.  Feel what happens in your gut.

Fear, resistance and excitement are what happens for me and, I think, for most of us.  I instantly think of all the things outside my control that could prevent my delivering on the commitment.  Then I think of all the things I might have to do to meet the commitment.  I become afraid that I might fail.  Then I imagine myself being held accountable and being embarrassed.  My fear of failure  takes over and I resist committing.  Interesting bunch of head trash right?  I still have some of it.  Excitement is the new part – the part I’m learning to nurture.

The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating — in work, in play, in love.
– Anne Morriss

Now that thought slows me down.  I may not be the only one who has the feeling of the walls closing in when I even think about commitment.  Otherwise that word “irony” wouldn’t be in the sentence.  Then we come to the words “Deeply liberating?”  Really?  It rings true, though, when I think of people whom I admire that are truly successful.  They seem to have more freedom to do what they want than I seem to have.  So where does the “deeply liberating” part come in?

Could it be that the constriction I feel  at the thought of commitment is not the closing of a  trap but just the narrowing of a passage?  A passage that leads to a greater place?  Maybe it is a passage from the old me to the new me.  The new more successful me.  I think sensing what is on the other side is the source of the excitement I feel.

The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.
- Vince Lombardi

Getting there.  Getting to that greater quality place and staying there.  That’s the conundrum for us isn’t it?  It is for me.

Why do most of us only occasionally, if ever,  get to our greater place?

It is because we don’t take into account how our brains work.  Our brains have a two stage learning process.  Short term and long term.  Most of our behavior arises from long term learning.   Most of what we consciously perceive arises from long term learning.  That’s right, both behavior and perception largely arise from long term learning.

Do you remember learning how to drive?  Do you remember the first time you sat behind the wheel and faced learning how to use all the dials, mirrors, levers and pedals?  It was a lot to take in, wasn’t it?  Did you have an iron grip at positions 10 and 2 the first time out on the road?  Were you intensely and consciously focused on all the details happening the first time you ventured onto a highway and had to deal with a semi-tractor trailer roaring next to you?  You were, during that time, using first stage or conscious learning.  First stage learning takes a great deal of concentration.  At this stage driving occupies your entire conscious mind.

Do you remember consciously doing any of that when you drove today or yesterday?  No, you don’t (presuming you are an experienced driver).  You’ve driven enough that you have accomplished second stage learning.  Driving enough with your conscious mind has trained your subconscious mind.  Second stage learning is when you’ve repeated something often enough that you’ve grown a neural network in your brain to sustain the behavior with little to no conscious thought required.

We have an autopilot.  Second stage learning is when we have trained our autopilot.  First stage learning can be instantaneous.  Second stage learning  takes time.  The amount of time varies due to many conditions.  Some of these are; the importance of the learning, the intensity of the training,  the strength of prior learning to be overcome and scope of the new learning – to name a few of the most important.

To be committed is to do what is necessary to get your autopilot on board with the commitment.  We learn, usually painfully, that not getting our autopilot on board with our commitments leads to broken commitments.  The case where we don’t go all way through the passage to our greater place.  Then it can be a trap of disappointment and discouragement.

You and I should be committed.  Next we’ll look at some of the great steps and processes folks have figured out to get this accomplished in our lives.  Stay tuned.

Consider strengthening your commitment to run a successful and profitable business by attending one of our upcoming workshops.

Business BootCAMP starts February 27th.

Business GrowthCLUB March 30th

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Excited About 2012? You Should Be!

January 2nd, 2012 · Planning, Process, Self Mastery

Say these four statements out loud.

  • 2012 will be a great year. 
  • It doesn’t matter  what happens in the economy or in politics. 
  • I will have myself and my business prepared for success.
  • I am excited about 2012!

It is easier to prepare for something defined rather than something vague, so you have to define success for yourself and your business.  Define it for yourself first and then for your business.  Here are a couple of questions you may find helpful:

  • What do you want your business to provide to you in 2012? 
  • What will your business need to achieve in order to provide it to you? 

Answering these questions and setting your beliefs (first 4)  are key to getting  the results you want.  The next step is to create a plan.  Reread the previous statement and check your gut.  How do you feel when you think about planning?

Make Planning Fun

I find it more fun when instead of pushing myself to get it done I allow myself to be carried along by a good process in a fun environment.  A good process is one that asks you interesting questions about each area of your business such that you will really think them through and carefully choose what deserves your focus.  It should do this with fill-in-the-blank planning tools , explanations and help, human help, right there to move you forward. 

The environment must support getting the plan done in a fun and effective manner.  To think outside the box you have to get outside the box.  Get away from your office and your phone and the all the interruptions so you can breathe freely and think about the big picture.

The environment should also stimulate new thinking and include other like minded folks that you can bounce ideas off and learn from.  A group of business owners and leaders gets this nicely done.  First timers get help from those more experienced and the more experienced get fresh ideas from folks new to the process.

With the right process, the right training, the right tools and friendly, stimulating help you can get a plan done that will help you every day.

Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew

Experience shows that humans are pretty darn good at planning ahead for 13 weeks.  Beyond that it gets a little sketchy!  In our process we only do detailed planning for the next 90 days.  We do set longer term goals we just don’t try to get specific beyond the next 90. 

Good business  is to give your plan a scrub and refresh every 90 days.  These plans tend, especially the early ones, to get a little reality mud splashed on ‘em.  Don’t worry – that’s what should happen!

Walkin’ Tall

The biggest result of planning is not the plan.  The biggest result of planning is the effect on you.  Whenever we learn or strengthen a skillset we feel better about ourselves and more confident.  To learn to walk you had to fall down a few times.  As adults we avoid situations that leave us walking taller because we are afraid we’ll fall-down-go-boom a few times.  So we stay in our comfort zone.  Funny thing is that staying in our comfort zone is falling down.  We become, over time, sheepish.  Say bahhh to that!

Take a Small Step Towards a Great 2012

Reread the 4 statements out loud again.  If that seems a little out of the norm – good!

  • 2012 will be a great year.
  • It doesn’t matter what happens in the economy or in politics.
  • I will have myself and my business prepared for success.
  • I am excited about 2012!

Really successful people are not the mainstream.  You’ll have to get comfortable with being a little different to have great success.

You Don’t Have to Do It Alone

Reinventing the wheel is not time well spent.  Find your local ActionCOACH (like me Winking smile ) and sit in on a planning session.  The process, the tools, the training, the help and the sounding boards will all be there waiting for you.  You’ll get comfortable right away and start having fun during the continental breakfast and it gets better from there. 

2012 is the time for you feel great about your business.  Read the 4 statements out loud to your self again.  I’ll wait right here.

  • 2012 will be a great year.
  • It doesn’t matter what happens in the economy or in politics.
  • I will have myself and my business prepared for success.
  • I am excited about 2012!

Now click this link to find out about my upcoming planning session – we call it GrowthCLUB.  Walk tall and sign up.  I promise a fun and effective planning experience or I’ll give you %120 percent of your money back – no it’s not free – I do this for a living!!

Your unreasonable friend,

Dennis

denniswillis@actioncoach.com

216-965-9129

or text the word profit to the number 50500 to get a text message with my contact data – yeah, I’m a bit of a geek too!

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Do You “Xerox” the Same Week Over and Over?

December 29th, 2011 · Planning

How big is your pile of past weeks that all look pretty much the same?  Is it big enough to do something about? Or will you bow your head in denial, pull on the harness and drive yourself through yet another week of life eating sameness?

Okay, that seems a little harsh.  It is just that I know so many of you business owners and leaders that do exactly that – just copy last week onto next week and go to work.

I love working with those that have turned that corner and are working on growing themselves and their businesses.  I get to be so much more effective in these circumstances.  My heart, though, goes out to those of you still slogging away, day to day.  There, but for some strong help I received, go I.

I sure did resist doing things differently.  I still do.  It has not been something I do naturally.  I’ve made all the excuses, blamed not doing it differently on so many urgent things and spent years in denial.

It all left me with a pile of similar weeks to look back upon and pretty much the same looking forward.  Figuring out how to get me to change has been quite a learning experience.  It still is.  I have people who help me stay on the ball now.

I’ve made the transition from “I have to do things differently next week” to “I get to do things differently next week”. That one little word change makes a world of difference to me.

I got some help and learned a new process.  Botched it up quite a bit at first.  Stuck to it and made great progress.  Passing it on to others helps me get better with it all the time.

If you are copying the same week over and over and sick of it – then maybe what helped me might help you.

An easy first step might be to subscribe to this blog.  Enter your email in the box at the right near the top.  You will simply be notified when I post an update.

If you’ve really had it with copying the same week over and over, contact me or click the link below.  Text the word “profit” to the number 50500 to get my phone number and other contact data.

Your unreasonable friend,

Dennis

Are you a business owner or leader that wants better results?  Here is a flyer for my upcoming workshop; GrowthCLUB.

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“There is NO WAY to Happiness…”

December 28th, 2011 · Positive Thinking, Self Mastery

I had a chat, earlier today, with an unhappy teenager.  I lick my chops at such an opportunity.  I’m hoping that sharing some of what I’ve learned somewhat later (okay a bunch later) in life will give them a chance to really enjoy themselves earlier than I learned to enjoy my life.

She made a kind of a statement I consider self-disabling.  I, of course, set her up with a question.  I just want to have fun too.  The question was (because she seems a bit withdrawn) “What irritates you?”  She fell right into my trap and began telling me things that irritate her.  One was “guys with long hair really irritate me.”

So I asked her where does “irritation” exist?  This throws a lot of people at first.  It is an odd question most have never considered.  It gets confused with where does the “irritant” exist but that is not what I’m after.  After just a bit of prodding she answers “in my brain.”  “That’s right, irritation, anger, frustration and happiness all exist only in our brains, right?”  I get blank looks quite often.

“Do long haired guys have the ability to reach into your brain and flip your “irritated” switch on?” I asked.  “No,” she answered.  “Then why do you say ‘They irritate you’? I pressed further.  More blank looks.

Here is a bad thinking habit I sometimes have and often hear; <someone or something> makes me <feel some emotion>.  Examples;

  • She makes me mad
  • He annoys me
  • Banks frustrate me
  • Planning bores me
  • Public speaking frightens me

These are all, simply, lies.  Self disabling lies.  Dr. House is right, everyone lies.  The ones we tell ourselves are the worst.

No one and no thing can reach into your head and make you feel anything.  You, consciously or sub-consciously, choose your response to events.

Event + Response = Outcome.

You can’t control events and you can’t control outcomes.  We all need to reduce the amount of time we lie to ourselves and pretend other people and things have the power to choose our responses.

The way to get started is to rewrite your thought habit.  Instead of thinking “That makes me mad” think “I choose to get mad about that”.  This simple rewrite gives you back your power.  It also gives you responsibility, accountability and ownership for your state of mind.  Instead of thinking “he irritates me” think “I choose to get irritated by him”.  You can still choose the same way – just take credit for it.

If you do then you’ll start wondering why you choose to spend so much of your life angry or frustrated or sad or whatever you are choosing.  Then you’ll make changes that will amaze you.

See my previous posts to learn more about changing your thinking habits.

So finally you’ll understand this 2500 year old quote.  Something I choose to be quite amused about.

“There is no way to happiness because happiness is the way.” – Lao Tzu

Your unreasonable friend,

Dennis

Are you a business owner or leader that wants better results?  Here is a flyer for my upcoming workshop; GrowthCLUB.

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Two Good Books and a Great Gadget!

December 27th, 2011 · Process, Self Mastery

This is the best book on team building I’ve read in an age!  Thanks to coach Kelli Hoskins for the recommendation.

How NASA Builds Teams: Mission Critical Soft Skills for Scientists, Engineers, and Project Teams

Stop interfering with your own success.  This is a great guide to coaching.  Thanks to great friend and client Don Jason for the recommendation.

You Already Know How to Be Great: A Simple Way to Remove Interference and Unlock Your Greatest Potential

I am now jealous of my friends with these Kindle/Android tablets!

Kindle Fire, Full Color 7" Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi

 

Disclaimer – using the above link may get me a commission from Amazon.  It hasn’t yet, but I’m told it may.  I only recommend books I’ve purchased and read and loved.

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The Most Important Word

December 27th, 2011 · Negative Thinking, Positive Thinking, Self Mastery

A dear friend recently said this to me in a bit of an angry and frustrated tone, “I’ve been trying to change this for 40 years!”

Not being a mind reader I’ve thought and thought about what those words and  tone actually meant.  He said that, because being an unreasonable friend, I was pushing him to change a thinking habit.

The thinking habit he has wanted to change is the one where he criticizes himself very harshly when he doesn’t do something perfectly.  He will even verbalize it as “I’m such an idiot” or “I’m terrible at that” or “I really screwed that up – as usual” or “I’m just not good enough”.

You may recognize that the line “I’ve been trying to change this for 40 years” is yet another self criticism.  I pointed this out and he responded that “NO, it’s just a fact.”

Facts are not really facts.  Einstein taught us that everything is relative.  Post Einstein-ian physics has taught us the universe is a very very weird place where things exist and don’t exist at the same time.  Where we are all, at this very moment, hurtling through space at hundreds of thousands of miles an hour while we think we are sitting still and reading (or writing!).  And we are not even sitting on the chair we that we think, it is a fact, that we are sitting on.  We are actually floating above it upon nuclear forces.  We think it’s a fact that we and the chair are solid things when we and the chair are mostly empty space.   Facts are arguably opinions about which we have feelings.

The common example we all know is; “the glass is half empty” vs. “the glass is half full”.  While both of these statements are logically equivalent they have very different effects on us when we think them.  One has us focusing on what we don’t have and one on what we do have.  One has us feeling sad about what we don’t have and one has us feeling grateful about what we do have.  There are deeper levels than this but consider how you want to feel.

Just recently a very talented, successful and well loved singer drank herself to death.  You may know who I mean.  If not, I’m sure you can think of a similar case.  I’m guessing she chose to think in a way that left her feeling angry, frustrated and sad.  I’m guessing she drank to numb the ensuing pain.   Choosing to think this way seems to know no boundaries, economic or otherwise.

Thinking habits do not change easily.  Habits are well trained neural networks that are part of our sub-conscious mind.  Consciously realizing we have a habit we wish to change does not make the neural network go away.  It is a thinking muscle, if you will, that must be consciously retrained until we have the habit that we want.  This process takes time and discipline.  You have to “hear” in your mind the response generated by your sub-conscious and then consciously replace it with the thought-response you want.  Saying it out loud – thereby getting in one repetition of the new habit will reinforce the new sub-c0nscious thought-response you are trying to create – helping make it a habit.

This can be slow and detailed work.  My favorite phrase here is “slow down to speed up.”  The more you slow down and catch your thinking and change it the faster the replacement becomes habit.  Most of us think because we’ve learned something or become consciously aware of a bad habit we will change it immediately. Then when the same bad habit shows up a few moments or days later we get frustrated that what we learned didn’t stick.  Then we criticize ourselves and, often, give up.  Because we didn’t learn it the first time we stoop to bad mouthing ourselves and quitting.

So the most important word is forgive.  We simply must understand and forgive ourselves.  Understanding the nature of changing a habit helps us not have unrealistic expectations of ourselves.  Forgiving ourselves for continuing a behavior we know we don’t want gives us the permission and encouragement to keep working at changing it. 

NASA learned it takes about 30 days of continuous reinforcement to rewrite a strong neural network.  With intermittent reinforcement it takes longer.  Forgiving yourself and consciously rewriting the thought until you have the new habit simply takes as long as it takes.  Getting mad at yourself and beating yourself up – just kills you.  Forgiving yourself and not rewriting the thought is another way of dying.  You have to to both, forgive yourself and make the conscious effort to rewrite the thought.

If you are not growing you are dying.  Create the lifelong habit of growing your thinking and all the moments of your life become opportunities to become a stronger you.

To my friend – you should think “I am so happy to learn, now, how to make changes I have wanted to make for 40 years.”  Forgive yourself for not getting it perfectly right every time and keep making the effort.  It is the effort that makes you strong.

Your unreasonable friend,

Dennis

Are you a business owner or leader that wants better results?  Here is a flyer for my upcoming workshop; GrowthCLUB.

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Crazy Busy? Here is What Successful People Do…

December 23rd, 2011 · Planning, Positive Thinking, Self Mastery

There is a very strong element to the thinking of really successful people that is very, very uncommon.

Here are examples of how most of us think.

Failure Mode 1

  • ‘I don’t have enough time’
  • ‘I need more time’
  • ‘There just aren’t enough hours in the day’

This is failure mode thinking.  A now failed business owner once said to me ‘I love being a business owner – I get to work any 80 hours a week I want.’

He was too busy to do what successful people do.

Failure mode 2

  • ‘I know’

He already knew better.  He shut down any suggestions with an ‘I know’ and would explain how he was already doing that.  The busy-busy-ness in his head was so intense he really couldn’t listen.  Instead he would explain and defend what he was already doing – even though it was not succeeding.

I know is another way of saying ‘shut up.’  ‘I know’ stops you from actually listening.  Big ‘I know-ers’ keep themselves from taking the time to learn what they need to learn in order to succeed.

Failure mode 3

  • ‘I should.’

A successful Australian told me they have a term for folks who ‘should’ all over themselves.  They call them ‘gonna’s', someone who is always ‘gonna’ do something, they already ‘know’ to do, if they had time.

So I’m about to tell you what successful people do differently than the prior three failure modes.  If, in response, you have any of these thoughts;

  • I don’t have time
  • I know
  • I should

then maybe you should stop and think about doing something differently.

Failure mode 4

  • ‘I’m not comfortable’
  • ‘I’m afraid of…’
  • ‘I just can’t…’
  • ‘I  just don’t want to…’
  • ‘I can’t see myself there doing that…’
  • ‘I would be embarrassed…’
  • ‘I wouldn’t fit in…’

We employ avoidance behaviors to protect ourselves.  For a bunch of psychological reasons I won’t go into here, we consciously and unconsciously avoid putting ourselves into the very circumstances that would help us most.

The four failure modes summed up:

I don’t have time to do what I know I should do.  I’m uncomfortable just thinking about it so I don’t listen and avoid thinking about it.  Then I go back to doing what I’ve been doing and accepting the results I’ve been getting.

Success mode 1

The most successful 3 or 4 percent of the population think differently than most of us.  Success mode first comes from changing your thinking habits.  This doesn’t happen instantly.  You have to use your conscious mind to retrain your sub-conscious mind (where habits are physical neural networks that must be rewired to sub-consciously produce different responses.)

Replace the thought ‘I don’t have time’ with

  • ‘I have all the time I need.’

You have the exact same 24 hours a day that the most successful people in the world have.  They aren’t getting greater results because they have a 36 hour day.  They know they have all the time they need and have all the time they are ever going to get – 24 hours each day.  You can’t manage time you can only manage how you use it.  More on this below.

Success mode 2

Replace the thought/verbal response ‘I know’ with ‘Isn’t that interesting.’  Knowledge is the enemy of learning. Stop telling people to shut up and stop telling your brain to stop listening.  Successful people are present in the moment and get learning from every instant of their lives.  They are constantly giving and getting – not shutting down and numbing themselves.  There is much learn on this subject.

Success mode 3

Replace the thought/verbal response ‘I should’ with I will or I won’t.  If it is ‘I will’ then stop and put it on your schedule.  Put something on your schedule to take a next step even if it is just a baby step.  For new behaviors baby steps are best for most.  Anything else is I won’t.  Really successful people are masters of ‘I won’t’.

Success mode 4

Replace avoidance behaviors with courage and self – discipline.  Really successful people have learned that their ‘comfort zone’ is the most dangerous place on earth.  If you are not growing you are dying. Being in your comfort zone is dying.  It might be more comfortable to sit on your couch and watch tv than working out or getting something done.  It is certainly easier.  Which one produces better health?  Which one leads to brain and body death?

Jim Rohn said you have two choices – the pain of self-discipline or the pain of regret.  One of them is far far worse. Get out of your comfort zone and stay out of it.

Success mode summary.

I will take the time to learn and do what successful people do even if it scares me, makes me uncomfortable or is hard for me to do.

I can help you with a baby step in this direction.  Never underestimate the power of a baby step in a new direction.  The significance is in the change of direction not the size of the first step.  Any step in a new direction is powerful in itself.

Really successful people choose how to invest their time by being clear on their priorities.  They get clear on their priorities by setting goals and making plans.  Are you uncomfortable with this?  Most people are uncomfortable.  Some have tried and since it didn’t work the first time – have given up.  Unrealistic expectations are another avoidance behavior.  We’re you an expert driver the first time you got behind the wheel?  Did it take a few drives before you were comfortable?  How many before you were an expert who could talk and drive at the same time?

I’ll teach you a thorough and repeatable process for setting goals and making plans.  You have to be willing to get out of your comfort zone and learn it.  No one can do your learning for you and no one can do your exercise for you. You won’t do it perfectly the first time.  You may be very uncomfortable at first.  Get over it.

If you are ready to stop not having enough time, to stop ‘I know-ing’ yourself into numbness, to stop scolding yourself with ‘I should’s’ and to stop avoiding growing because its uncomfortable then click on the link below and book yourself into a great baby step toward a new future.

If you already have goals and plans then I know you’ll click on the link because you are always hungry to learn how to do things better and we just might a have process that will help you improve yours.  While you’re at it – get of few of your friends who need to get started and out of avoidance to come along with you.

Good luck!

Here’s the link, click here to start a wonderful new path and become uncommon.

Your unreasonable friend,

Dennis

denniswillis@actioncoach.com

December 21, 2011

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